my Interesting Saturday
So, there's this thing called "Interesting" and people keep asking about it. "What is Interesting?" they ask, and of course the short - and best - answer is: Everything Is Interesting To Someone. Or keep it even shorter and just say, Everything, full stop.
The other answer is that Interesting is a one-day event where a variety of people stand on a stage and talk to some other people for ten minutes about things that interest them. As with many things, what interests some people might not interest others, but as the talks are only ten minutes long, you don't have to sit through too much before the next one comes along, and chances are that one will be more interesting. In a day that starts at 10:00 in the morning and finishes at 5:00 in the afternoon, if you haven't heard anything interesting or inspiring then that is down to you being a boring and dull person, not the people talking.
Chances are it's the only event where you'll hear someone talk about "the psychological violence of UK girls' comics in the 70s and 80s"; conduct a symphony orchestra; watch a man make his own yoghurt live on stage and then see see someone else eat it; see a man shoot ball-bearings at his face with a homemade gun (not live on stage; I doubt the insurance would cover it); learn Morse code with squeakers and kazoos; hear a talk entitled "Ponies I Have Loved, Both Real and Imagined"; and see the colours of Radio 4 - all in the same day.
And that's only about a fifth of what we saw and heard. There were also talks on Stan Laurel's dad; bonkers scientist/inventor Sir Francis Galton; how to win Monopoly (buy everything and create a housing shortage); guerilla gardening; and why photographs of sunsets are always rubbish:
Ken Hollings puts it well in his round-up review:
"With over 30 speakers taking part, plus all the usual sidelines and distractions, [tagging] is perhaps the only way to suggest the diverse range of subjects covered. So even a less than comprehensive set of tags would have to include: yachts, robots, Sir Francis Galton, sunsets, Morse code, conducting an orchestra, Stan Laurel’s dad, frivolity, the colour violet, being a gentleman, videogame cheats, girls’ comics, sound apps, bacteria, nuclear power, education, ponies, homemade merchandising, guerrilla gardening, drinking, monopoly, waterwheels, technological doping and (most likely) cake."
I imagine quite a lot of this stuff will end up online in the form of video, presentations, photos and blog-posts etc. so if/when I find any links to my favourite talks, I'll stick those links up here. In the meantime, you can find reports on Interesting 2009 at these places:
Roo Reynolds' round-up
Another round-up from Alby Reid
Daniel Weir's two-part (so far) round up): part 1, part 2
Anjali Ramachandran: Interesting stuff from Interesting
#interesting09 and #interesting2009 on Twitter
interesting09 and interesting2009 on Flickr.
More to be added later (perhaps)